The estimations issued by the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development "AOAD" has evaluated the Arab food-Security gap by 21 billion US dollar. Sudan is expected to participate in bridging this gap by providing the Arab countries by their necessary imports from food commodities by the year 2011. According to prospects of the five - year strategic plan, by the end of it Sudan could supply a surplus of production estimated at 8 million tons of food to the Arab world such as sugarcane, beet roots sugar, oil, grains , cereals , peanuts, sesame and sunflower. AOAD started to implement the emergency program of the Arab food security, which contains three stages and will commence in the year 2010. Secretary general of AOAD announced that the current year is a preparatory period for collecting the financial resources and systematizing the work. The total cost of the programme is evaluated at 65.4 billion Us dollar , he explained. The geographical area of the project includes 9 Arab countries which are the Sudan, Tunis, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Syria , Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen all these countries are considered as agriculturaly important from the consumtion perspective. the Arab food gap will increase and is expected to reach 71 billion US dollar by the year 2030 increasing six folds from the levels of the ninties ( which was 11 billion US dollar). This increase is a result of the regular population growth.
The number of Arab world population will reach 545 million person by the year 2030, at an increase rate of 63.3% from the current rate. It is to mention that according to the reports issued in 2004-2005, the total geographical area of the Arab world is about one billion and 406 million Hectare, the cultivated areas are only 5%(71.5 million).The uncultivated areas are about 19 million Hectare, while forests cover about 101 million Hectare and the pastures are about 68.6 million Hectare.
Source: SUNA
